Pillars of Eternity - Preview @ Eurogamer

February 12th, 2014, 07:48

Eurogamer has a new preview for Pillars of Eternity based on a talk with Josh Sawyer.

Why do the game's characters look mundane?

Pillars' characters are not flamboyant fantasy heroes, not wizards with pointy hats, not knights with elaborate armour. 'Why?' people asked after watching the recent trailer (embedded above). 'Why are the characters so… normal?'

"Some people might not like that our characters' proportions and outfits look comparatively drab and dressed down and not exaggerated," answered Sawyer, "but that's also kind of what the original [Infinity Engine] games were like. They don't look like [World of Warcraft] characters, they don't look like Diablo characters. They're not super-exaggerated.

We're not doing romances

Romances between you and fellow adventurers seem to be a de facto feature of role-playing games today. But Obsidian isn't doing them in Pillars of Eternity.

"We're not doing romances," said Sawyer, "but [the other characters] do have pretty detailed stories, they do have their own personal motivations and goals that sometimes align with yours and sometimes they don't. They interject into your conversations, they argue with you, they argue with each other."

And if you play on Expert mode, or if you enable character death, then followers can die. But Obsidian's "not real big on having characters die in scripted sequences". (Incidentally, if you don't like the given, storied crop of party members, you can make your own, using the Adventurer's Hall.)

Originally Posted by threepwood27
So I'm guessing no slot for shoulder armor?

Because I have it on good authority from every other game that medieval knights had massive, gaudy pauldrons that invariably look like they'd direct blades towards his head.

HOW WILL MY SHOULDERS EVER BE SAFE???

I've seen so many of the shoulder armors he describes, but I never actually thought about the fact that they would indeed direct the blade straight towards the head. You could pretty much just bounce the sword into the head via the giant armor on the shoulders.